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Ten years ago Freerange Press was just a twinkle in the eye of a few young idealist designers. We started something very small and since then its been a decade of wonderfully surprising twists and turns. In 2008 the architect Gerald Melling embraced our enthusiasm and his last architecture book became our first publishing adventure. In the years between 2012 and 2015 we became embroiled in the complex and exhilarating task of understanding Christchurch as it recovered from a major disaster. We have produced 10 journals covering a wacky range of topics from the commons, feminism, gardening, violence, have now published over 15 books, and created an academic imprint called Harvest (Fresh scholarship from the field). We’ve had several thousand downloads of our journals, and sold over four thousand books. In 2012 we got an accountant, appointed a board of directors and set Freerange up as a cooperative business. This board has been sailing the boat for the past few years.

Now, in 2016 we want to Freerange to become a true cooperative, one that helps people to create wonderful, meaningful and beautiful publications and projects together. We want to make a company that helps people imagine and realise amazing things together, and that uses publishing as a way to address both the problems of, and the beauties in, our world.

The first step in this journey is to open up our membership, so that people (like you) can become part of Freerange. Below we’ve outlined what that means, and what you get from it. But the main point is once you join you become part of our gang, and as a member of our gang YOU get to help decide what our Freerange is all about.

Co-op Membership

A few years ago we did a survey and lots of you said that the thing that most excited you about Freerange was the possibility of meeting and working with other great people. This was great feedback and we want to make sure this happens.

We need a variety of skills that we know you possess – from writing and editing to design, web, business and marketing. This is an exciting time in our development with many cool paths we could navigate. We need to decide what we really want as a community.

We are also excited about putting the collective through a collaborative ‘’Refactor’’ process which will look at various aspects of what we do, how we do it, who is involved and how we can reward people better for their contributions (including paying people!). We will be hosting a discussion with all cooperative members on this process and how the redesign can best meet your needs as a contributor and member and generally amazing person.

How do I join?

The process of becoming a cooperative member is easy as. There is no liability or risk involved but will be plenty of piratey perks along the way.

A welcoming present! We’re giving the first 30 or so members a copy of Once in a Lifetime: City-building after disaster in Christchurch, and a copy of Songs for Christchurch! ($45 and $20 value respectably)

You get to participate in making beautiful things with great people.

You will be able to get involved in and share the profits from commercial Freerange projects

You get access to some of the skills and knowledge of the other members for your own projects

You get experience in running a cooperative and transparent company that tries to make profit while also distributing funds to good causes and making wonderful things

You get access to reduced price and free copies of books and journals

Obligations and Duties

Firstly, Freerange Cooperative Ltd is a limited Liability Company so members and directors are protected financially from any debt or obligation Freerange may incur, and it iss the Directors’ job to make sure everything is operating as it should be so there is no financial risk or liability for the members.

However there are some loose expectations:

That you have input into Loomio discussions and voting as much as possible

That you try to join in the yearly AGM or other meetings via skype or in person

That you become a champion of Freerange and help promote it to friends offline and online

That you generally try to think of ways to help Freerange flourish and grow

We want the members to collectively work this out, but we think a commitment of around ten hours a year will be needed.

If you have any questions at all, please send us an email. barnaby@projectfreerange.com It’s really important to us that we do this right, and a good chat might be just the thing. Otherwise you can join the Loomio discussion on this topic here.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his fomily, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration sets out a number of key elements that can be said to constitute the concept of ‘Home’. Sadly, we are failing to provide these necessities of nutrition, shelter, healing and a social support structure to all members of the global community. The reasons for this failure are various and interconnected but a major contributing factor is the displacement caused by the endemic problem of ‘forced migration’. How can we ensure that in the future these Human Rights relating to the home environment are truly universal in more than just name?

The term ‘forced migration’, as defined by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, includes a wide range of people displaced either within or outside of their nation of origin by circumstances beyond their control. This definition is wider than the traditional, and often misunderstood, term of ‘refugee’. Crucially, this definition of forced migration includes those people displaced by natural, environmental, chemical and nuclear disasters as well as by famine or development projects. This gives the term far more relevance to the society of the future in which such events may be major drivers in migration patterns.

Shade netting in the Sheikh Yaseen camp in Pakistan.

Forcibly displaced people have a very acute awareness of the importance of Human Rights to the concept of ‘Home’ and of the fact that ‘Home’ relates more to a mental or physical state of refuge than to any fixed geographic or spatial location. With this in mind, it is understandable that simple items, such as this shade netting provided by the Sheikh Yaseen camp in Pakistan, can drastically alter the environment and enhance the comfort and lifestyle of the inhabitants.

The first humans started spreading out of Africa around 110,000 years ago. We have always been a migratory species and seem to have an insatiable curiosity about what opportunities may lie beyond the horizon. Our culturally diverse modern societies were all created by, and are still being shaped by, successive waves of migration from indigenous peoples through to more recent arrivals.

‘Forced migration’ is not a new problem, however the potential human and economic cost resulting from the displacement we face in the near future is a serious cause for concern. Environmental destruction, resource wars, diminishing food security, rapidly rising populations and developing ‘third world’ economies mean that forced migration will be a major contributor to these growing numbers in the coming years. According to the International Organization for Migration’s ‘World Migration Report 2010‘, estimates are that the nunber of international migrants worldwide is currently over 200 million and at the current rate will reach 400 million by 2050.

One major accelerating factor in future migration levels will be the acute manifestations of global climate change. Many communities worldwide are facing rising sea levels, extreme storm surges, flooding, drought, insecure food supply and other associated problems causing population displacement at unprecedented levels. According to academics and international agencies, there are currently several million ‘environmental migrants’ worldwide, and this number is expected to rise to tens of millions within the next 20 years, and hundreds of millions within the next 50 years. This phenomenon was recently dramatically evident in Somalia and in Pakistan where simultaneous drought and floods have left over 12 million people displaced or in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

A house in Alaska which is no longer a home.

Such environmental migration tends to disproportionately affect developing nations because their precarious geography, histories of imperialism, and unsustainable development leave them without resources to face such challenges. This vulnerability further cements the place of developing nations as victims of the global economic order and as mass exporters of human capital. An example is the current famine in the ‘Horn of Africa’ region where most refuge and assistance is being provided by developing countries while the aid response from wealthy nations has been somewhat slow and underwhelming. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently stated in his address on World Refugee Day 2011 that: ”Despite what some populist politicians would have us believe, approximately 80 percent, [of refugees] are hosted and cared for in developing countries. To take a current example, only about twopercent of the people fleeing Libya are seeking refuge in Europe.”

Many commentators believe that developed nations should be contributing much more to addressing this displacement problem due to their superior wealth and their greater contribution to creating the economic and environmental problems we face today. However, the global financial crisis is currently being skillfully manipulated to create resentment against migrants and refugees and to justify rigid national immigration policies and small refugee resettlement quotas. UNHCR has recently expressed concern that the current resettlement programs of the few nations who do offer them are not even keeping pace with the growth of refugees in urgent need of resettlement.

Both permanent and temporary migration to developed nations can play a highly valuable role in development by allowing migrants to achieve safety and stability, to gain skills and experience and to remit money back to their homeland. Current protectionist policies in developed nations fail to promote such valuable development tools and simply guard the wealth and privilege amassed at the expense of underdeveloped nations and the environment.

Solutions

Although organisations such as UNHCR and various NGOs are doing an admirable job with limited resources, the sheer volume of the displacement likely to occur in the future necessitates a new approach. The interconnectedness created by globalization and technological progress means that no migration situation can now be seen in isolation, and also offers us potential solutions to the problems we face. We urgently require a wholesale re-application of our global resources and technology to address the causes of displacement rather than the symptoms.

It is within the power of developed nations to radically reduce the root causes of forced migration by altering the course of the global market and economic system, and assisting democracy and social justice to flourish. We need proactive policies at both national and international levels that target the poverty, environmental destruction, wars and inequalities causing our current displacement problems.

We must adopt a ‘Human Rights’ centered understanding of what constitutes a ‘Home’ and work towards providing all members of our global society with access to these rights without exception. Only a system that respects the rights of all to a stable home environment will allow us to work towards a new age of greater freedom of movement, stability and equality in the area of human migration.

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Further Reading

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights- Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations and proclaimed on December 10, 1948. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtmail

‘World Migration Report 2010- The Future of Migration: Building Capacities for Change,’ International Organization for Migration, 2010. http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/ WMR_2010_ENGLISH.pdf

‘United .Nations High Commissioner’s message for World Refugee Day 20 June 2011′. http://www.unhcr.org/ 4e033be29.html

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Joseph Cederwall is a writer, social entrepreneur and immigration consultant with degrees in Law and Anthropology. He has worked extensively with migrant and refugee communities in New Zealand as an Immigration lawyer and adviser.

First Thursdays are like late night shopping, but good. Community-focussed arts events, they bring people to a neighbourhood or precinct to wander, absorb, participate, witness and feast until bedtime. First Thursdays have become calendar fixtures in many cities around the world.

On October Second, the first golden evening of spring 2014, hundreds of people came to Sydenham to take part in Christchurch’s first First Thursday. At 6:30, Gaby Montejo took the stage at the Honey Pot cafe ahead of the Lady Poets. The photograph beside his item in the First Thursdays publicity flyer had shown him re-imagined as Conchita Wurst. No one knew what he was going to do, but those present who knew Montejo and his art knew that it could be anything.

What he did was sit down and introduce himself.

‘But this is not about me,’ he said. ‘It’s about you. Especially you, Audrey Baldwin.’

A stunned Baldwin made her way to the stage and took her place beside Montejo. He shared his perceptions of her with the crowd – non-judgemental, gutsy and willing, collaborative, positive, a machine of excitement – and then bestowed upon her a magnificent, garish, one-metre-tall trophy. Baldwin looked delighted. The audience applauded, cheered and laughed.

Photo of Audrey Baldwin accepting her trophy.

‘I was no good at sports,’ Baldwin said. ‘I never thought I’d get a trophy like this.’ She spoke with eloquence and brevity, thanking those who have supported her, always and recently. She stroked her trophy. ‘I’ll find a space for this.’

What was Montejo up to here? He explained that his eight years in Christchurch had been a time of great change, and he meant the obvious, yes, the earthquakes and all that, but what he wanted us to notice that evening was the energy happening in the creative arts, and who had come forward to spearhead creative actions and events in post-quake Christchurch.

‘People like Audrey Baldwin,’ he said, ‘and also people like Jessica Halliday.’

claimed her trophy and said, Academy-Awards style, that she just wanted to thank God. And Gaby, for giving her not just a trophy but this platform to say she’s got one of the best jobs in Christchurch.

Montejo’s next trophy went to Melanie Oliver – playful, fair to diversity, honest, optimistic, participant and driver – who was not present to accept it. Hopefully, she has it by now.

Chloe Geoghegan – enthusiastic, caring, hardworking, tenacious, her humour enlightens – was down in Dunedin ‘busy mothering another city,’ Her trophy was accepted with feeling and just a touch of mystifying snark by a man who identified himself only as Ted.

Coralie Winn – energetic, professional, adventurous, empathetic, motherly – was also not present, but her partner Ryan shot a video of Montejo’s admiration and acknowledgement for her to watch later. Ryan accepted Winn’s trophy on her behalf, saying. ‘You have no idea how much she loves trophies.’ He declined to speak further because, ‘I speak for her way too often as it is.’

Towards the end of his performance, Montejo acknowledged these trophies were a bit cheesy and generic. ‘They were all I could afford,’ he said. ‘I swear if I could get you what you deserve it would be spectacular.’ He explained that he had grown tired of waiting for someone of higher authority than Gaby Montejo to honour these people and their accomplishments.

‘And so, by the power invested in me as an art consumer and art participant, I deem these excellent, high achieving people (who just happen to be women) The Founding Art Mothers of New Christchurch.’

Montejo’s piece was part ode to the exceptional strengths, talents and efforts of these five women, part plea that they be recognised, part challenge to the old boys to think what it means to be a mother and maybe decide that it’s time to move over and make way for the new girls. It was one citizen giving back some of the love five people had poured into his city.

‘All who live here should know these art drivers,’ he said, and no one who witnessed this performance that evening could disagree with him. If you don’t know the five Founding Art Mothers of New Christchurch, change that. Seek them out. Look them up. Each one has some kind of web presence. (Gaby Montejo does, too. But this is not about him.)

It is now four years since the first quake struck Christchurch in September 2010. There are bright-eyed four-year old children who know nothing of the pre-quake city, and students that have completed entire university degrees post-quake. It’s been a while.

Unfortunately much of the national discussion about Christchurch is still framed around the sympathy, empathy, help, support and need that was so necessary in the immediate days and months after the earthquakes. Yes there are still thousands of people struggling with insurance and EQC repairs. But what people need now is their policies to be fulfilled, and reform and legislation to make sure that happens, not others to feel sorry for them. The default pity narrative needs to stop. It distracts from the real issues such as the economic, planning and governance problems that continue to dominate the city.

This article has 3 sections: The Blueprint, The Money, and why your vote affects us all in Christchurch.

I write the brief words below not as a long-term Christchurch resident. I moved here at the beginning of 2012. I write this as someone trained in architecture and city-building. I’ve discussed Christchurch with dozens of urban design experts, planners, and designers in the past few years and almost all of them are stunned and disappointed when I explain to them how the process is being managed in Christchurch. The major concern is that the entire central city planning is being led by a very small team of insulated designers, politicians, and property owners, who are using extraordinarily powerful legislation to achieve their goals.

A group of us (with Ryan Reynolds, James Dann, Emma Johnson, and myself as editors) recently published the book Once in a Lifetime: City-building after Disaster in Christchurch. This book offers a 500-page investigation and critique of the Government’s Blueprint for Christchurch. We chose not to talk about the election in the book because it is looking at a much bigger picture, but now I feel the need to frame some of the contents around the election. The book has 55 essays, so this doesn’t represent all the views, but as an editor is does represent what I think.

I write this critique from the position that the involvement, confidence and trust of the public is absolutely critical for city-planning and design. There is an innate intelligence in the people that live in a city, and the publics that people form in response to the issues that arise. To exclude these publics, and to distrust them (if there was trust then why are their views not included) as the government does is foolish. To suggest, as the Minister in charge has, that this can in any way be best practice or industry leading is at odds with the planning and design literature of the past 40 years.

1. The Government’s Blueprint.

In 2011 the government asked the Christchurch City Council to develop a city plan for post-quake Christchurch. The CCC developed the now famous and award winning Share an Idea campaign and consulted broadly with the people of Christchurch, who generated over 100,000 ideas for the new city. This led to the release of the Council’s Draft City Plan in November 2011. At the beginning of 2012 Minister Brownlee rejected the spatial aspects of that plan and invited a new team of designers to work on what was to become the known as the 100-day Blueprint. Since the end of 2011 the people of Christchurch have had no opportunity to contribute or feed in or critique this document.

It replaced a sophisticated set of instruments that the Council had developed to encourage good development and planning with 18 large government-led projects. You can see the details here.

Like any first draft of a document it has some really good bits and some questionable bits. It was a heroic effort to complete it in 100 days. The problem is not that the plan that was produced in 100 days; the real problem is the way that it has been implemented. There has been little or no consultation on the plan since its launch, massive projects like the $100 million dollar Avon-Otakaro park, or the $284m Convention Centre have had almost no public input or consultation. There has been no international peer review either. The designers that made the plan have been locked out of the process since it was launched and there has been little ability for it to adapt to the rapidly changing city.

Think about this for your own city. Imagine the government coming into the historic centres of Auckland or Wellington. Firstly they ignore the heritage fabric of the place and encourage the demolition of 80% of the city, then they over-rule the local council’s plan, then they use the full power of the state to compulsorily purchase land and implement a huge number of projects with little or no discussion with the public.

This is exactly what has happened in Christchurch. If it sounds a bit extreme then I think you understand it properly.

The Blueprint is being implemented by an agency completely separate and often conflicting with the local council. Instead of upgrading the Council’s original plan and working with them and their deep knowledge of the city, CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority) has replicated hundreds of positions, wasted millions of dollars and built a knowledge-base in competition rather than in collaboration with the city. (Brownwyn Hayward explains this well in her paper: Rethinking Resilience: Reflections on the Earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, 2010 and 2011)

The Council on the other hand is showing a rare mix of strong leadership and a real desire to be transparent and engage with various communities in a respectful and meaningful way. They are using new online tools to get quicker and better information and are directly funding and supporting scores of important post-quake projects in a way that CERA has never done.

If speed was the goal of the blueprint then it has failed as we are barely 10% rebuilt almost 4 years after the big quake and if quality is the goal of the blueprint then why did it lower the environmental and urban design standards that were present in the council’s original plan. It amounts to a kind of homeopathic remedy that claims success when the patient was getting going to get better anyway.

The problem with much of the media discussion around the rebuild is that so much of it is about the speed or progress of it. There is little or no nuanced discussion of the quality of the decisions. While people do need their houses fixed quickly there are huge transport, urban planning, and infrastructure decisions that need time and consultation to make right. For the next 20 – 50 years it is going to be the quality of the decisions, not the speed with which they are made, that makes the difference. CERA’s Roger Sutton has said the same thing. (see Roger Sutton’s article in the new book) Given this the exclusion of the public from the decision-making is mysterious, unwise, and deeply undemocratic.

However this money is not a one way deal, and it should not be seen as benevolence. Two of the main things growing the NZ economy at the moment are Canterbury based. The first is the massive expansion of dairy on the Canterbury plains, and the second is the enormous amount of insurance money coming into the city from insurance companies from overseas. The government is deeply involved in the dairy expansion (in that it was enabled by firing the elected regional Council in 2010), and has little to do with the latter, as these are contracts between individuals and insurance companies.

So let’s be clear that the economy of Canterbury is producing a significant amount of growth for the country at the moment. We all benefit from that.

While a large amount of money has been promised and spent by the Government to support post-quake Christchurch, (to fix the roads and pipes, to fund the central city, and many other activities), it is likely that the government will take in a very similar amount in taxes from GST and income tax. The GST on $40 billion is around $6 billion (and this continues to flow and money spreads through the economy), and a significant amount of the money is being spent on salary and wages that are taxed at various levels, if we pick a low figure of 20% then that is another $6.8 billion in tax take. So without even going into the broader tax take and economic gain around $13 billion will come back from the $15 billion spend.

“the wider New Zealand public need to recognise it’s not them just footing the bill for poor old Christchurch, it’s actually going to cost them very little.” The Government had been “strangely quiet in this department,” Gough said.” (Alan Wood. The Press. 31.05.2014)

So there is every chance that the earthquakes will be a cost neutral exercise for the government. On this level it has been a large and well-timed stimulus package for the country to help it out of the recession. (Interesting that this is the kind of stimulus package that Labour proposed going into the 2008 election.)

The hard work of people of the citizens of Christchurch, businesses, institutions, and government spending in Christchurch have been a huge part of NZ emergence from recession. While there has been extraordinary support and care for Christchurch in the past few years, the economic investment in Christchurch shouldn’t be seen as charity.

3. How you vote affects us all in Christchurch

The simple reality is that no great city has ever developed while being ruled by somewhere else. It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t work.

In the months after the quakes extraordinary powers were necessary. But at some point these extraordinary powers need to go, and in Christchurch they are still in place 3.5 years after the big deadly quake. It’s too long. They are still being used to fast-track decisions around the local Council, they are still being used to demolish heritage buildings without consents or discussion, and still being used to progress projects like the $500 million dollar convention centre with no public business case or public input into public space.

The key problem here is that we aren’t able to express the complex issues, to have the important arguments, and to direct the city in the direction that people live here want because we are being ruled by a large government agency.

I don’t think this is disaster capitalism or a conspiracy of any sorts. Its the more mundane reality of an ideology that distrusts the public and favours the safety and comfort of projects led by politicians and project managers.

As an extension of cabinet and its executive power, this government agency (Canterbury Earthquake Reconstruction Authority) rules with the tacit consent of the rest of the country, and this is why your voice is important. When you vote during the next few weeks, please consider Christchurch.

The National government has basically admitted that the time for these extraordinary powers is over, but rather than give us a plan for it, they have decided to move CERA into the office of the PM, further shifting the power to Wellington and away from Christchurch.

This call to support a new government is not to reject everything that has been done. We can bank the good stuff, the hard work and tough decisions and acknowledge those how worked through this tough time, but we need to change tack to let the public back in, and to turn this rebuild process into the extraordinary opportunity it still promises to be.

It shouldn’t, but the outcome of this election will likely make a huge difference to how Christchurch is governed and will inform thousands of little decisions about how the city will feel and look in 10 years time. The city and its people have shown extraordinary capacity for growth, innovation, creativity and a strong vision for the city. The new council is heavy hitting and filled with skilled operators, and the rebuild is paying for itself. It shouldn’t depend on a national election to reclaim our governance back, but it does. And that is why your vote is important.